


When We're Pretending

by Deejaymil



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Drunk Sex, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Roleplay, Sexual Roleplay, The Author Regrets Nothing, Trust Issues, absolute filth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-25 08:48:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9811922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: At some point during his bathroom trip, he’s flicked open two buttons on his sensible button-down, kinked his belt off-centre, and tossed a hand through his hair to leave a rakish line of cowlicks down the middle. It’s silly. It’s sexy.“The fuck, Spencer?” she asks him, and he shrugs nonchalantly.“You told me to act,” he says, curling that cold-warm hand down over her thigh instead of her arm. “I'm doing as you asked. I wonder who I am tonight?”And as the night goes on, she finds herself wondering the same.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blythechild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/gifts).



> She’s on her fourth Screaming Orgasm and he’s making short work of yet another Drunk Uncle. It’s one a.m., and there are so many better places they could be than here tucked in this sticky booth listening to cats fuck outside the grimy window by her right ear. But another drink is ordered—surprise me, he says, so she buys him a Georgia Julep that’s going to kick like a mule once the cognac hits the medley of sugar already in his gut—and she pushes the boundaries, always. Maybe it’s the alcohol that does it, the irresponsible mix of liquors she’s danced with tonight. Maybe it’s the wide-eyed shock on his face when he gets up to go to the bathroom and realizes just how fucking smashed he actually is, weaving backwards and focusing on a point of nothing between his bright red ears.

“Just pretend you’re sober,” she says with an unladylike snort, and he raises both his eyebrows to oddly wonky angles and nods seriously. “Act, Spencer. Get that Vegas boy getup going.”

“Yes,” he says. “I am. Yes.”

And then he strides away.

When he returns, she almost doesn’t realize. The cats have stopped fucking and are fighting now, and she’s alternating rapping on the glass to startle them and wiggling her fingers at the tom to make him hiss. Males: always fun to pick on.

A hand slides down her shoulder, tracing a line of heat and shock down the length of her bicep, and he purrs, “Ma’am,” in a voice she reckons should have been outlawed years ago. “My luck is looking up.”

She turns, blinks, stares at him. He cocks an eyebrow again, saunters a little to the side, only wobbles slightly, and then he winks.

It’s the wink that undoes her.

At some point during his bathroom trip, he’s flicked open two buttons on his sensible button-down, kinked his belt off-centre, and tossed a hand through his hair to leave a rakish line of cowlicks down the middle. It’s silly. It’s sexy.

It goes right to her cunt and she’s wet before he sits his skinny ass back down.

“The fuck, Spencer?” she asks him, and he shrugs nonchalantly.

“You told me to act,” he says, curling that cold-warm hand down over her thigh instead of her arm. It snakes down, her legs slipping almost automatically apart to invite him further before her brain can screech  _you’re in public, idiots_ , and hooks her up onto his lap with only a woozy kind of  _woah_. “I’m doing as you asked. I wonder who I am tonight?”

“Ridiculous,” she scolds him, and she can smell his breath: peach brandy, mint. If she closes her eyes, it’s not so hard to believe he’s someone else. Another rush of heat, a throbbing warmth, and his hands are wide and hot on her hips. Against her back, his clothes rustle. Heart rambling along. She listens to it.  _Tha-thump tha-thump,_  it rackets, and she says, “You smell lucky.”

“Pretty girl like you as my charm, of course I am,” he replies, and he doesn’t sound like Spencer anymore. He needs a new name, she decides right then, and feels a thrill, a hunger, a spark at the idea. Maybe they’re both different people. The cats snarl and hiss and, by the bar, someone shouts. “But not for long. I think I’m… reckless.” He hums it. Voice like cutting silk, smooth and permanent. A tear underneath the familiar sound, taking her apart. She hisses a little at that zip of tone, the way he drawls it just a little, wanting to look. See him shape words differently. See his face slip into a mask, someone else, this reckless person.

“I think you’re greedy,” she responds, and settles onto his lap. He’s in slacks, the fabric soft and gentle to the pads of her fingers. She’s in a dress she picked without care, light against the summer air outside, even this late. “So greedy.” She presses her hips down and he’s throbbing with her. She feels him twitch against her, feels him thickening. She chokes a little, wraps her calves around his, pulls them tight with just the material between them. And his hands bite down, ten points of pressure on the bones of her hip. Nails on the point just before ragged. He chews them, she notes, but not to the extent that she does.

He nips her ear. Bites hard, his tongue sucking the lobe in. She shudders with that pressure, her nails digging through the sensible slacks that are all Spencer.

“I think I’m about to over-play my hand,” he says, his chest rumbling behind her back, and distantly she hears the barkeep call out closing time soon. “You’ve had a little too much to drink, love.”

He says  _love_  lecherously, like he’s thinking of fucking her right here through the damp fabric of her panties, and she feels his cock twitch to confirm just that. It’s stunningly arousing. Shocking.

Not him.

 _I’m with a stranger,_  she thinks, giddy, and grinds down with a twist of her hips. Tight enough that he’s almost more than a suggestion under her; tight enough that he’s going to have a tell-tale damp patch on the front of his pants. Danger, E. Prentiss.

But, oh god does the thought get her off.

“I think I’m drunk.” She doesn’t lie, but overstates, and lolls loosely against him. “And sick of this place. How far is your place from here, Sven?” She picks a name at random and feels him swallow back a laugh. It’s easy to giggle along. Emily doesn’t giggle, but neither of them is who they’re supposed to be tonight.

“Too far,” he says, and overplays his hand. It’s shocking. Spencer would never. But he does. She jolts and hisses and rocks down against the two fingers snaking up under her leg and tracing cheekily down the line of her underwear. Staring blankly, she falters for a moment as her gaze skips across a man watching the TV above the bar and he glances back, uncaringly. With no idea that those reckless fingers are slipping around the thin elastic, the pads of his fingers soft and gentle and just barely sliding into her.

He tugs them out and away, straightening her dress with a sweep of his hand. Flustered, thrown, she stares at him and tries not to look undone.

“There’s a hotel around the block,” he murmurs in a voice like Spencer, and it’s cold water thrown over her. Her legs slipping shut, he wipes his fingers on his slacks and looks at her with soft eyes. “Em?”

She knows what he’s asking.  _Will you let me take you there? Do we continue this?_

_Will you let Sven fuck you?_

She can already tell. The man who’d do that doesn’t care for women. Greedy, yes, and reckless. Callous. Maybe, cruel. Dangerous, even.

_Yes._

“Eliza,” she says, and titters again, turning so she can slide her arms around his neck and brush her mouth against his. A brisk touch of lips. “Lead the way, stranger.”

He does. Tugs her from the bar into the warm night outside, leads her down the darkened street. His tennis shoes tap on the sidewalk below, he’s pulling ahead with their fingers just barely entwined and his profile illuminated harshly by the orange light of a shopfront display. Eyes cast forward, nibbling on his lip; she looks down and can see his cock tenting his pants still, the dark stain of her on him.

“Sven,” she husks, and he whirls around with frightening speed and pins her to the wall behind. They crash together, her hands in his hair, his around her waist, and kiss. His lips are rough, his hands aren’t. She feels the tips of his fingers dancing on the thin cotton, an apology for Sven’s forceful tongue and his single hungry moan. It’s almost an  _Emily_. He hides it just in time.

She cracks under him, hooking a leg around and dragging him closer. A car wheels past, too close, and she gasps into his greedy, lying mouth and lets him go. Hips cocked forward, head cocked back, he’s opened a gap between them with those apologetic fingers and it lets her gather her wits as he stands there, pink-lipped and pretty. They pant. Ragged, harsh, and his fingers skate the line of her tit. Under her bra, she’s over-stimulated, sensitive, rubbing against the silk lining with every shudder of her heaving chest.

“Impatient,” she manages, and spits it like an accusation. Like the cats from the bar, squaring off, she presses her palms against him and shoves him back. He staggers a little as he goes, and his hair is a mess. Belt half undone, and she vaguely remembers her hands doing that. Oops. “You’re the type to take advantage of a girl alone, are you?”

And she says it like  _please say yes_  and he responds with a groaned  _yes, fuck_  and another surge towards her. She lets him, for a heartbeat, as their mouths meet and twist and she feels him tremble against her skin. Sharp bones, acutely angled, and he pushes them all against her, right down to the rigid line of heat in his pants, and snarls, “Move.” It’s an order. His face goes cold as he hurls it at her.

She has to squeeze her legs shut for a moment because the rush of heat and wet between them leaves her knees shaking. Stumbling, she moves. Staggers a little for his benefit, into the crook of his arm, and he leads/drags her along the way. But her hand sneaks down and curls into his back pocket, fingers firm against the tight curve of his ass. A familiar touch, and his taut muscles relax just a little.

Eliza is a bit silly, a little naïve, so she snuggles under his warm arm and wonders about the muscle she can feel under his shirt. Not much, just enough, and she thinks of asking him what he does for a living. There’s a scar on his neck, under the curl of a single lock of brown hair. Maybe she’ll ask about that too. Maybe she’ll bite around it, make a mark of her own. Only half as permanent, but perhaps memorable in its own way. Silly, giddy Eliza, wanting to make a difference on this strange, cold man.

Another car rolls past as they turn the corner, and she can see the glinting light of the hotel up the road. No doubt their room will be shitty, the dregs of the night. A tiny bed and no amenities.

She really doesn’t give a shit at this point. He’s flushed. Not hard anymore, but she knows that’s only temporary. Knows that soon enough he’ll be cocked between her legs like a gun about to fire, hard and dangerous and hot under her hands. Eager, a little, she skips forward and he grabs her and drags her back with a hoarse laugh.

Those wide, callous hands scoop her up and suddenly she’s lifted, shrieking, into the air. For the barest heartbeat, her dress flares out and exposes her legs, a snatch of underwear. He can’t see it from his angle, but he sees her hand snap back to try and contain it. His eyes widen like he’s sorry, and she wants to shout  _don’t be_ , because Sven wouldn’t. He’s a rich man’s son with no regard and his whole future mapped out from birth.

But he doesn’t. He settles her back down over his sharp shoulders, tipping her back as he barks another laugh. It’s easy to let herself be tipped, hooking her hands through his belt for a giddy kind of support as he forgets his other self and twirls a little on the sidewalk with her hanging on for dear life. How he keeps his feet, she’ll never know, but he does and it’s almost a dance, almost a celebration, and it’s glorious.

She’s carried inside like that, to her chagrin, and she laughs helplessly to think what Hotch or JJ would say if they could see them right now. Hotch would be disappointed. JJ?

Proud, of Emily. Probably shocked by Spencer.

They’re lucky. Sven, rather, is lucky. He gets a room and they stumble their way back there; she was right and it’s small, cluttered, not really ‘Vegas playboy’. They’ll make do, like they always have.

She saunters in and, before he’s even closed and latched the door, slips the strap of her dress from her shoulders to pool to the floor around her feet. She watches it go, slithering slowly, flawlessly, and then traces her eyes up the lines of her legs and torso to look up to where he’s staring at her like he’s never seen her like this.

Like they’d never done this. Despite the fact that the second day she’d worked with him, they’d gone for coffee and ended up fucking in the backseat of his Austin. Despite the fact that they’d been on and off since then. Despite his eidetic memory and his photographic fingers mapping her out countless times before.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs, and she rolls her eyes at him. He slips character, often, and it’s always been a bitch to keep him focused once his cock starts pumping the blood away from his brain. Like the unfortunate ‘landlord retrieving rent’ roleplay they’d tried when they were still new to this, where he’d choked on his own acting and ended up spluttering out a lecture on economics while naked and aroused with her staring blankly at him. Weirdly, she’d still gotten him off. Even weirder, she’d gotten off too.

But he doesn’t falter tonight. Just walks towards her with a cocky, arrogant stride and juts his chin towards the bed, even as his fingers trail on her spine. Down down down over each bump of her vertebrae, his eyes burning into her, and he snaps her bra open one handed to tumble down onto the dress.

“Bed,” he purrs, pressing close, sweeping his mouth over the line of her hair. A wave of mint-breath. “Hands and knees, face the wall.”

Oh god.

Her brain shudders, skips a beat. She blanks, for a heartbeat, because she’s never heard that tone of voice before. It throws her into chaos, muscles within her already rippling with anticipation, and she turns and walks towards the bed with Emily’s sass even as she hears the  _shhhshshsh_  of his belt coming loose behind her. She shucks her underwear off as she goes, her hair curling on her bare shoulders, her eyes locked on the bed, dropping onto her knees on the soft, stiff surface.

Fabric rustles behind, over-eager and clumsy, and she drops to her hands and smiles into her wrists as she hears him stumble into a chair. But she doesn’t look, because Sven probably wouldn’t stumble and Eliza’s heart wouldn’t skip a bit at the sound of it. Hips cocked to the air, wet and exposed, he comes up behind her and grabs her side, bringing his mouth to the curve of her spine.

He bites. With a low growl and a groan, he bites at her spine and then he moves to her ass and nips again, his tongue a hot-flash of interest that she twitches against. His hands slip down. Still warm. Still bony. Wrap around her thighs, and she grinds her nails down into the bed with her face pressed between them as he eases her legs apart and steps back, one step. Two.

Silence. His eyes sweeping her almost make an audible sound. Examining. Measuring. Taking her apart. She’s open, vulnerable. Fucking  _throbbing_ with want, and she wonders if he can see her tighten with anticipation when he brings his fingers up to trail along the line of her thigh. Trailing, trailing, _trailing_ , and then slipping inside as he releases all the air in the room with one loud gasp, pushing his fingers knuckle deep into her.

“Jesus,  _fuck_ ,” she chokes, because he’s rough and she wants it. Those nails, almost ragged but mostly smooth, they could hurt. They don’t. The shift of his wrist as he spreads those two fingers wide almost demanding. “You’re fucking keen.”

“Quiet.”

She bites the blanket. He leans forward, crowding behind her. Fingers still inside and shoulder hunched down so he can cradle her with his body. Cock thick and bare against her leg. She bites the blanket, and he bites her again, once, twice, three times, marks against her side. “Quiet,” he hums again against her skin. “Shh, Elle.”

He got her name—even her false one—wrong on purpose, and she arches against him. Oh, when he plays the game, he plays it. She’s a toy under his hands, his uncaring hands, and she wants to be used. Just for tonight. Fucked and tossed aside, and she’s making breathy little whines into the blanket at the thought. Just tonight.

She remembers her role in this and sags just a little, forcing him to wrap his free hand around her stomach and hold her upright. Despite his dedication, he’s careful to splay his fingers around the scar he knows she hates him touching. “Mmm,” she hums, and rocks back against him, slurring her words a little. “You feel nice.”

He doesn’t answer. Just pulls those rough fingers free with a slick noise and she can hear the rasp of skin on skin, a wet sound that follows, a low grunt. Knows he’s stroking himself harder with the evidence of her desire, knows he coming closer, knows he’s pushing against—

He’s hard. She bucks against the bed and curls inward, her hips up and his cock pressing inside. Hard and hot and it’s exactly like she expected; dangerously real, a weapon. He uses it as one. Hammers home in two choked strokes of his hips, his nails cutting half-moon shapes in her side. Two strokes and then he folds forward, the chaos of this moment buckling him into her body. Against the bed, her knees complain at the weight as he presses down atop her. Inside her, he’s beating and living and a little too much. She’s too wet, too ready, and he slips out as he folds, striking her leg and hissing a sharp  _fuck_ as he catches himself and realigns.

Shoves back in and she barks his name, fucks up. It’s  _Spencer_ she cries, and his hand snaps around her bicep and he drags himself down to hiss against her ear, “He’s not here. Wrong name, sl—” and he stops and chokes on what he’d almost said. She feels him shudder, feels him gag on the word, feels him  _try_. Feels his utter revulsion, his hips stalling.

It’s a weird moment where they pause, the bedsprings quiet under them, and she twists around and examines the look on his face. Raw and frozen, and the word is on his lips. Sven would say it. Sven wouldn’t hesitate.

Spencer never would. Not even now.

And that’s okay.

She smiles so he knows that and arches, catlike, back against him. He takes the hint, finds her shoulder. Forgets the word. Finds the tattoo between her shoulder-blade and her spine—two die, because she needs all the luck she can get to offset her own recklessness—and sinks his teeth down, anchoring himself as he rolls his hips forwards once more, into her and sets up a steady beat that taps out this night with the headboard on the wall. He loves her tattoos. Loves the die on her back, and the curl of magic around her hip. His other hand is on that now, his fingers tracing the dusty, watercolour sparks. The only colour on her body, a frivolous pleasure. She’s never believed in magic, but she wants to.

He’s never given up hope that true magic is real.

There’s one more only he knows. With his fingers on the twist of magic painted across the bone of her pelvis, he hooks his thumb around and presses down into the line between her thigh and pelvis. A sneaky spot. A hidden spot. A reminder that once she was wilder.

The third time they’d fucked, he’d pressed his cheek to her thigh and tasted every inch of it. He’d come without her touching him, getting himself off purely on the knowledge that she was completely open to him. No one else had ever taken her apart so carefully, so meticulously, that they’d found the carefully tattooed words.

And he taps his thumb against it as he fucks her tonight. As her breathing slips from controlled to uneven, as he begins to rasp. She comes, once, around his cock. Snaps her hips forward into the bed, her knees tumbling out, and he catches her and soothes her down so she’s flat, almost, just canted up enough so that he can still slip awkwardly in and out of her. As she goes, his teeth pinch and she squeaks. He apologises. Kisses the spot, his lips butterfly-light and his lashes brushing her spine. He’s not Sven right now.

That’s fine. That’s so fine. They always slip back to themselves before they come. Her body slows and her breathing does too and his strokes are long and even and deep. When she turns her head to study him, his eyes are shadowed and locked on her. More memories being etched into that infallible brain. Lips parted, cheeks flushed, hair wild; he stops suddenly, wheezes a soft  _oh_ , and comes. Messy and pulsing, and she stretches back with a groan into it. Takes him deep as he makes a mess of her. Pulls him further in until he’s spent, rolling down against her, sliding out, tumbling into the bed in a mass of arms and sweat and limbs, the damp blanket kicked aside.

And they just breathe. The room smells of them. He puffs hair out of his eyes, she rubs a cramp in her thigh. Hearts slow.

And it’s over.

Arms wrap around her and he sighs as he nestles close. She needs to piss, needs to clean the sticky trickle she can feel working down her leg, but she also needs this. To hold him close and wipe Sven and Eliza away for the moment, because she knows pretending to be someone else exhausts him, frightens him a little.

“I love you,” she murmurs, and that’s a concession to how much she knows this takes from him. He won’t allow the words any other time, worried that they promise commitment and more than this. Worried that she’ll think he’s demanding that.

“Love you, too,” he mumbles against her bare chest, and brings his lips to the patchy skin where they’d, unsuccessfully, tried to cover the brand Doyle had left her with. A concession to her needing to be someone else to be open with him. “You’re so gorgeous, Em.”

Her name. He uses her name, and she knows they’re done for the night. They kiss. Slow, luxurious, nothing like before. It’s easy, this is. She knows just how to kiss him until he’s asleep, as though she’s stealing the breath from his lungs with every sweep of her lips, soothing him with soft whispers of love until he’s asleep, lax and beautifully pliant, a hidden smile traced over his face. Once he’s gone, she creeps away to the bathroom. Cleans herself up, taking a warm towel back to do the same for him, and he barely wakes. Absolute trust.

If only she could do the same.

They’ve never fucked as them. Not even that first time.  _Pretend I’m the woman I’m replacing_ , she’d laughed, and he’d come like that with a startled  _wha?_  She’d never let him live that down.

But it’s okay. This works. For now. Being someone else until the final, absolute moment.

She finds her place back in his arms and lets herself sleep. In the morning, they’ll leave here as themselves. She’ll still be pleasantly sore, he’ll still carry the bruises she marked on his side.

They’ll do it again, later, as two new people.

Maybe one day she’ll do it as herself.

**Author's Note:**

> **Edited August, 2017.**


End file.
